Next-Door Neighbors Back Bush on Expanding Trade

STEVEN LEE MYERS

Wednesday

Apr 23, 2008 at 5:04 AM

Canada and Mexico lent their weight to President Bush’s campaign to expand free trade within the framework of Nafta.

NEW ORLEANS — President Bush pulled the leaders of Mexico and Canada into an unusually direct involvement in his domestic political efforts to expand free trade on Tuesday when his two North American allies joined him in a foray into both Congressional politics and the presidential campaign.

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada lent their weight to what has been something of a lonely campaign by the president as he has traveled the country to make pro-trade speeches and angry statements about the “petty politics” that he sees threatening one of his administration’s major legacies.

They joined Mr. Bush in sharply criticizing a decision by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to scuttle a vote on a free trade agreement with Colombia. And indirectly but unmistakably, they rebuffed calls by the two Democratic presidential candidates to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta.

“We talked a lot about the Nafta, and of course we agreed that this is not the time to even think about amending it or canceling it,” Mr. Calderón said, appearing with his two counterparts after two days of meetings here in New Orleans in which they trumpeted what they described as the irrefutable economic progress in each of their countries since the agreement was reached in 1994.

“This is the time to strengthen and reinvigorate this free trade agreement among our three countries,” the Mexican president added.

Mr. Bush has always made his views on trade abundantly clear, but his increasingly critical comments underscored a mounting frustration that the trade issue has stalled in Congress and come under attack by the two Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Without mentioning either by name, Mr. Bush dismissed criticism of Nafta as “a throwaway political line,” suggesting, as one of Mr. Obama’s own advisers reportedly told Canadian officials, that opposition to free trade involved electoral politics more than policy questions.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, facing off in Pennsylvania, where the effects of trade had become a pointed campaign issue in the weeks leading to the primary on Tuesday, repeated their pledges that they would seek to renegotiate the terms of Nafta. Both Mr. Calderón and Mr. Harper made it clear that they would not support reopening the agreement.

“Of course, it’s the United States who needs to make a decision about this election,” Mr. Harper said, “but I think that in the end, Canada really is confident that the next president will also understand the importance of Nafta.”

Both leaders also echoed Mr. Bush’s warnings that rejecting a free trade agreement with Colombia would undercut not only economies in the region, but also its security.

Trade, long politically divisive in the United States, has become a more charged issue than usual because of the confluence of the presidential campaign and an economic slowdown that has increased anxiety about job losses.

It has also divided Democrats. While Mr. Bush reveled in the expected support of American business executives who gathered in New Orleans under the auspices of the United States Chamber of Commerce, he also found an ally in this city’s Democratic mayor, C. Ray Nagin, who on Monday evening said trade benefited the city, still reeling under the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. Pelosi has suggested that the House would consider a vote on the Colombia agreement if the administration would consider an expansion of unemployment benefits and an increase in training programs to assist those who lose their jobs as companies move operations overseas.

“The American people want solutions on the economy and less partisan rhetoric from the president,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement responding to Tuesday’s criticism. “Democrats have repeatedly told the president we are willing to work with him in good faith to create jobs and restore our economic strength.”

The White House has rejected that idea. Officials say the administration had worked with Congress on an economic stimulus package and that the agreement with Colombia would create jobs by opening that country’s market to American exports.

“She’s effectively killed it,” Mr. Bush said of Ms. Pelosi on Tuesday, reiterating his arguments that failure to approve the deal would also affect regional security by weakening Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe, and strengthen leaders like Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez.

Mr. Calderón and Mr. Harper both emphasized that it was not their role to insert themselves in the American political debate, let alone the presidential campaign. Mr. Harper said that Canada would consider a request to renegotiate Nafta by the next president, though he said his government would not support such a step. He also noted, at a time of popular anger over rising fuel prices, that Canada was the United States’ largest supplier of oil.

Mr. Calderón warned that hindering trade would harm Mexico’s economy, leave North America uncompetitive and intensify pressure on immigrants to seek work in the United States, another volatile political issue.

“This,” he said, “is a decision that is solely in the hands of the Americans.”

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